Sacred and Truly Christian Philosophy, or Cosmic Meteorology

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A decorative headpiece featuring intricate scrollwork sits at the top of the page, common in 17th-century printing to denote the start of a major section.

PREFACE: IN WHICH IT IS DECLARED

The text begins with a large decorative initial letter 'Q' set in a square woodcut border. HOW varied and differing among themselves are the opinions of philosophers, both ancient and modern, concerning the essence, origin, and effects of meteors In the 17th century, "meteors" referred to any atmospheric phenomenon, including rain, wind, clouds, and lightning, not just falling stars.; how unstable their assertions are, cannot remain hidden from those who have devoted themselves with a little more accuracy to the reading of the books and volumes of Philosophy. Indeed, the reason for this matter is usually obvious to men endowed with sharpness of mind; for where the foundations of the palace of Philosophy are found to be mythical, there the structure must be expected to be weak—not unlike the shadows of a Chimera—and consequently stuffed and swollen with the wings of probability and doubt. What of indubitable truth is to be drawn from a spurious philosophy, produced by the inept labors of the Pagans? For to them, it was by no means granted by the central light of nature—that is, the Creator of nature and natural things—to truly penetrate the fountain of Christian Philosophy or the spring of the sacred scriptures.

What is the doctrine of Aristotle, what of Plato, what of Pythagoras? What, finally, is the doctrine of the Greeks, Hippocrates and Galen, and what of Avicenna and the rest of the Arabs—whether Philosophical or medical—if we look upon the marrow of the most Holy Bible correctly and in a mystical manner, or with the eyes of a Lynx? A "Lynceus" or "eyes of a Lynx" refers to someone with extraordinarily keen sight, a common metaphor for deep intellectual or spiritual insight. Certainly, it is a merely deceptive vapor or a vanishing smoke, and a plainly empty fiction. Hence it is that St. Paul original: "D. Paulus" exerted himself to the utmost to draw us away from vain Philosophy, inasmuch as in it nothing is to be elicited but trifles and things scarcely probable, rather than any matter as it truly is. Do we not gather from the excellent teaching of the Prophet how impious and profane it is, having left the way of truth, to imitate the doctrine of the Pagans? By this we are taught that the fountain of all wisdom must by no means be abandoned to seek art, science, and understanding in foreign regions, as the Agarenes The Agarenes (descendants of Hagar) are referenced here, likely following Baruch 3:23, as symbols of those who seek wisdom in human reason rather than divine revelation. used to do.